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I realized that there aren’t too many tutorials out there that explain the different texture types. Diffuse, normal, specularity, displacement, occlusion. WHAT DO THEY MEAN!? Well in this CrazyBump tutorial I cover exactly that.

We’ll be creating our own versions of those texture types using a base image, then using those textures in Cycles to create a realistic cobblestone material.

Most people are taught that in order to texture something all you need is an image. However this gives boring, flat and very unrealistic results. It’s essentially the same as printing off the texture onto a piece of paper and sticking it onto a wall:

The light doesn’t interact with the bumps in the texture, nor the gloss. It’s completely flat and unrealistic:

A better method is to generate a normal map, specular map, occlusion map and displacement map.

This allows the light to interact with the bumps, gloss and displacement, resulting in a much more realistic material:

Very few artists can be bothered creating all of these, but it’s the biggest thing that separates realistic materials to average materials.

Adding a basic texture in Blender

We’ll start by adding a base color texture to a plane and setting up the lighting.

1. Load the default scene in Blender and replace the cube with a plane.

2. Change the default lamp into a Sun lamp, set the Energy to 10 and Size to 0.010. Rotate the sun so its shining along the surface of the plane:

3. Go into Top View (Numpad 7), then edit mode and unwrap (U) the plane via Project from View (bounds).

4. Add a new material to the plane, and split the window to show the node editor:

5. Add an Image Texture node (Add>Texture>Image Texture) and load in the FloorsRegular0105 image (tiled), then connect it to the Diffuse Color input.

If you render it now you should see this:

How FLATtering

Using CrazyBump

For the next part of this tutorial we will be using a program called CrazyBump. It’s not free but it does offer a full 30 day trial.

CrazyBump is used for taking an image texture and easily generating a normal, displacement, specularity and occlusion maps from it. You don’t “need” it, but it will save you hours of work from trying generate those maps yourself using Gimp or Photoshop.

1. Once you’ve downloaded and installed CrazyBump, click the Open button in the bottom right hand corner of the main screen.

2. Locate and select the FloorsRegular0105 texture on your harddrive. After it loads it should ask you to select a shape. Click the one on the left:

3. Once it loads you should be taken to a screen where you can adjust the Normal map. A Normal map is a special texture type that will create realistic bump maps.

Adding the Normal Map

1. With the plane selected, go to the node editor and add a new image texture node. Click the Open button and load in the Normal map texture we just created. Since it’s a normal map, set the type to Non-Color Data.

2. Add a Normal Map node (Add>Vector>Normal Map) and connect it to the image texture node. Connect the output to both the Diffuse and Glossy shader Normal inputs.

You should now have this:

Looking better already!

Adding a Displacement Map

1. Before we add the displacement map, we need to add more geometry to our plane. Go into edit mode, press W then in the toolbar (T) set the Number of cuts to 30 (you’ll need to type it in manually).

2. Next go to the modifier panel and add a subsurf modifier level 2, for even more vertices.

3. Add a Displacement Modifier directly beneath it and click New texture.

4. Go to the texture panel and change the type to Displace. Select Image from the dropdown, then select the generated displacement map we created earlier.

5. Return to the modifier stacker and set the strength to 0.012 and the direction to Z.

Render now and you should have this:

Adding the Occlusion map

Depending on the material, this is probably the least important of all the texture maps as it’s very subtle. Still, it can help push your material closer to “photorealism” territory.

1. Add an Image node and load in the Occlusion map we created earlier.

2. Add a mix node and drop it between the diffuse shader and the image texture. Connect the occlusion texture into the bottom input and the diffuse texture into the top input. Set the blend type to Multiply.

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User of Blender for 9+ years. I've written tutorials for 3d World Magazine and spoken at three Blender conferences. My goal is to help artists get employed in the industry by making training accessible and easy to understand. I'm an Aussie and I live in South Korea ;)